Many state colleges,
such as Akron, Youngstown, Toledo and Cincinnati,were started with endowments
from the major city universities they once were.

Cleveland State University was not quite
as lucky. Founded as a state university in 1965 from Fenn College,
a private institution, CSU opened its doors as a state college with an
endowment of $0.

The Fenn College endowment
was originally started in the late 1920s with a bequest of $100,000 from
the estate of influential Cleveland businessman Sereno Peck Fenn, according
to Bill Becker, university archivist. “When the state took over the
school, they never tried to get, nor did they ever receive, the endowment,”
Becker said. “They took over the school, the employees and the educational
program of the college.”

Those who were around in 1965
remember well that time of transition. Now 88 years old, William Patterson
saw a lot of changes during his 35-year tenure at Fenn/CSU. Starting
out as a mathematics professor at Fenn College in 1936, he went on to become
dean of the College of Engineering, provost of both Fenn and CSU, and finally
CSU budget officer before his retirement in 1971.

At the time of the transfer,
Patterson was provost. As such, he was requested by Fenn trustee Paul S.
Dickey to prepare a constitution for an educational foundation along the
lines of a similar fund at Purdue University. “The purpose of the proposed
foundation was to undergird the academic work of the new university by
providing financial assistance to its students, faculty and staff as they
pursued their educational goals,” Patterson said.

The foundation was to
be funded by monies controlled by the Fenn College Board of Trustees after
negotiations with the CSU Board of Trustees had been completed. Patterson
called it the Cleveland State University Educational Foundation and the
board accepted it exactly as he wrote it, but for one minor change. “I
was flabbergasted when I found out they passed it and it was called the
Fenn Educational Foundation instead,” he said.

Patterson said there
were several reasons why Fenn board members didn’t want CSU to have control
of the funds, but named only one. “Many of the Fenn trustees enjoyed
a long association with the college and with one another and may have desired
to have the board continue to play a role in higher education in the city,
Patterson said. “In my opinion,” he added, “when the negotiations
with the CSU board were completed, the funds under control of the Fenn
board should either been given to CSU to provide financial assistance to
its students and faculty, or to the Cleveland Foundation.”

Patterson said CSU felt
somewhat shortchanged. “All the funds didn’t go to CSU students and faculty,
but the majority did,” he said. Using the guidelines Patterson prepared,
Fenn board members set up the foundation and became trustees of the new
fund, donating a large majority of its grants to CSU and its students.

It functioned for six years
as the Fenn Educational Foundation and in 1971, became the Fenn Educational
Fund, now one of hundreds of others controlled by the Cleveland Foundation.
According to William S. McKersie, senior program officer in the education
department at the Cleveland Foundation, the fund was originally set up
to support cooperative education. This fell right in line with the principles
of cooperative education on which Fenn was founded in 1923.

“The foundation has always been very committed
to working with CSU,” he said. “CSU is among our higher education grant
recipients.”

Until this year, the
fund hasn’t seen many changes in the almost 30 years it has been part of
the Cleveland Foundation, which McKer-sie said is a good omen as far as
funds go. Now, after more than a decade of no changes, new guidelines
went into effect Jan. 1, 2000. These guidelines require grant proposals
to “show how their respective programs or projects will address the workforce
development needs and...other reputable research and analysis.” “It’s
the only fund in greater Cleveland that’s devoted to advancing cooperative
education and internships. It’s always been a very effective fund and has
certainly advanced education, but we are trying to take it to a higher
level,” McKersie said.

CSU always has received
a lot of strong support from the foundation, he said. “The fund is one
of the more important in terms of education.” Total giving since
1965 is more than $4.6 million and almost $1,460,000 of that amount has
gone to fund programs at CSU. Other major grant recipients are Case Western
Reserve University and Baldwin-Wallace College. The fund’s market
value as of December 1999 was $9.3 million, of which approximately $355,000
will be available for distribution in June 2000 for the 2000-2001 school
year.

The fund supports several other Cleveland
area institutions from as far east as Lake Erie College to as far west
as Baldwin-Wallace.

In addition to grants to area colleges,
the Fenn Educational Fund also spreads its wealth elsewhere. The
LINK program, established about 12 years ago with money from the fund,
is an effort to attract minority high school students to CSU in the area
of technical business and engineering. About five years ago, LINK spending
was increased to include liberal arts students and non-technical business
students.

In the past three years,
the Fenn Educational Fund has also backed a venture called Project Springboard
which assists students with disabilities in their career development.